Autism Speaks Walk

(April 2019) Prior to our first Autism Walk we hadn’t told many people about Payton having Autism.  Our Face Book accounts were really just pictures of the girls.  We weren’t really involved like we are now.  We’re pretty private people; and usually joke about people putting too much personal stuff online.  Once I noticed that there was a walk being put on by Autism Speaks I thought we might want to participate; and then once Axis told me they’d be there that day, well then I really wanted to participate.  Axis has really been great for Payton.  They’ve really improved our quality of life in ways we rarely think about.  Back on topic:  The point of this walk is to help raise money for Autism research.  This means that I’ll be raising money; but it also means I’ll have to make it public that Payton has Autism.  By no means am I ashamed of her having Autism; but I am a little nervous about the questions and possible judgement I’m about to encounter.  We end up ordering 60 t-shirts for the people who have committed to walk with us.  As we get closer to the walk I realize I was completely wrong to be nervous about putting Payton’s condition out there.  People were awesome.  They mainly wanted to know why they were just finding out.  Right before the walk I got a surprise phone call from the Iowa representative from Autism Speaks congratulating us on having raised the most amount for any first time walker.  Payton was slated to be honored at the walk.  This was great!  I have a confession to make, I’m a tad bit competitive.  I was more over the moon though about just how much support we had; and the amount of people that came out of the wood work to help support Payton.  It was really overwhelming to know so many people cared.  It was amazing.  It ended up being a really cold day for the walk which meant that they had to shut down a lot of the events and booths planned for the day; but we still had fun.  Our family came over after the walk for some pizza. Moral of the story, I was nervous about telling people about Payton and ended up finding out that our support network was way bigger than I had thought.  We killed it at fundraising and set some new records.  We can’t wait for next year.  We might even get the right color shirts this time..